


Perhaps I Am Myself Again

by callmedok



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood and Gore, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Character Death Fix, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Fix-It, Gen, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-07
Updated: 2020-11-07
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:54:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27430822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callmedok/pseuds/callmedok
Summary: "That’s funny! there’s blood on my chestoh yes, I’ve been carrying brickswhat a funny place to rupture!"- Frank O'Hara, "Mayakovsky"Eddie Kaspbrak dies. He takes a leap of faith. It's fine, don't worry about it.[Look, it's the death scene but revamped, in addition to a fix-it. Graphic descriptions of gore, body trauma, etc., everything that kind of comes with Eddie getting skewered. There is a happy ending, I promise.]
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak & The Losers Club
Comments: 5
Kudos: 10





	Perhaps I Am Myself Again

**Author's Note:**

> The third stanza of Mayakovsky by Frank O'Hara lived rent-free in my head for a month straight a while back, and this was the result. I'm just here to bring Eddie back, that's my joking goal now. One death fix-it per Eddie, coming soon to a screen near you. Free variations included! I rated this M for gore tbh, and that's it.
> 
> CW: Graphic description of gore and injuries, describing the trauma of being stabbed via clown, horror imagery by the buckets. I do bring up Eddie's relationship with Myra in passing narration, but it's like very surface level stuff.
> 
> Title comes from the last line of Mayakovsky by Frank O'Hara.

_That’s funny! there’s blood on my chest  
oh yes, I’ve been carrying bricks  
what a funny place to rupture!  
and now it is raining on the ailanthus  
as I step out onto the window ledge  
the tracks below me are smoky and  
glistening with a passion for running  
I leap into the leaves, green like the sea_

-Mayakovsky, Frank O’Hara

 _“Maybe there aren’t any such things as good friends or bad friends—maybe there are just friends, people who stand by you when you’re hurt and who help you feel not so lonely. Maybe they’re always worth being scared for, and hoping for, and living for. Maybe worth dying for, too, if that’s what has to be. No good friends. No bad friends. Only people you want, need to be with; people who build their houses in your heart.”_ – IT, Stephen King

*

The cracking of Eddie’s chest is the same sharp snap of chicken bones into the garbage, the rib cage of the turkey he always ended up helping with because Myra struggled with breaking it open-

 _Oh_ , some disconnected part of him thinks as the rest of his body screams, _so this is dying_. This is the hot slick wetness of blood oozing from his chest, acidity rising up into his throat with every stuttering, struggling breath. This is the feeling of air between his ribs and rubbing against the soft tender parts inside him, hollowing him out for who knows what-

There’s a sickening _schlup_ as Pennywise flings him from the claw, a harsh crack when he hits the cavern wall. Everything flickers for a moment, darkness obscuring his vision and the taste of blood in his mouth as he bites his tongue, before things come back into focus. There’s a blurry edge to everything, and it burns to even breathe-

The sharp pain in his cheek overpowers everything, the warmth of Richie’s hand like a brand against his clammy skin. Something streams down his cheek, blood, tears, fuck knows what, and it’s a struggle to even smile weakly. No matter how small, the smile feels like it tears the hole in his cheek wider. The taste of blood is something he’s starting to drown in, a slight gurgle on the edge of every breath, but he smiles anyways.

A gibbering part of him, tucked away snugly in the back of his mind, is screaming about everything that could happen next. Collapsed lungs, whatever shit is caked on Pennywise rubbed into vulnerable organs, some kind of fucked-up version of an air embolism with every nook and cranny inside him exposed, burst stomach or fuck knows what on top of a ruined lung, every single risk and WebMD and doctor’s diagnosis rattling around like an upturned roulette wheel.

The rest of him knows it’s already a foregone conclusion, though. How many Eddie Kaspbraks can recover from a pierced chest, nicked lung, cracked spine? It’s skewed data, a rotten sample size from the start with a study of one, and the results are already in. No matter how hard Richie presses against his chest with that jacket, it won’t prevent anything.

He can’t live with himself ( _ha_ ) if the last Richie sees of him is when he’s miserable. He’s spent too long in misery already, a ghost in his own life. He can’t let it be the last thing he feels, because that means the fucking clown has won.

“Ri-Richie,” he says, the words scraping out of his throat like broken glass after a cough. What can he even say, to tell him that Eddie’s not hollow anymore? That coming back and finding them, seeing his real family again, helped him breathe?

“What, what’s up, buddy? What is it?” Richie says in a rush, hand still pressed to Eddie’s cheek, his chest, and the light just… does something to Richie. Something about the way the shadows curve around his jaw, the light catching the cracked lens just so. It’s strange to think that Eddie’s own blood is caught in that crack, that he’s the reason Richie looks so desperate.

Something in his chest aches, and he doesn’t think it’s the hole in him. It’s too late to figure out anyways, the pins and needles already beginning to set in. He wants to say _Stay, please. Keep me real, keep me tethered, don’t leave me alone_ , because there’s darkness creeping around the edges again, Richie’s touch turning dull and strange the more blood leaks out of him. He feels light-headed, bigger and smaller at the same time, flickering and fading over and over, and he can’t do shit to fix it.

What he says instead is “Make, make It small. Almost…almost got the leper, just… not enough,” because all he can do right now is believe in them. Give them what they need, because it doesn’t fucking matter what Eddie wants, it doesn’t matter that for the first time in years he finally feels real, is desperate to cling to the feeling.

The Losers come first. They’ve always come first, and he won’t regret anything if it means they survive.

Something in him feels like it tears as he reaches out to Richie, fingers numb as he clumsily grips the other man’s wrist. “Go help, numbnuts. I’ll be here when you get back,” He says with a weak grin, words ill-fitting in a mouth full of blood. “Promise, Rich.”

And he means it in the moment, he really does. Wherever Richie and the others are, he’ll be there too. He’s waited over twenty years, what’s a few more minutes?

A few more minutes is his head filling with cotton balls, everything dull and hazy. His mouth feeling heavy and off even as all he’s doing is trying to breathe, trying to think past the thick coppery taste in his mouth. He tries to reach up, wipe at the shit on his face, and all that happens is his fingers twitch where they’re curled in Richie’s jacket pressed against his chest.

 _Please,_ he thinks, some half-delirious thing as all he can hear is screaming, who’s screaming? He doesn’t know, may never know, and the thought makes him want to scream right back, desperate and furious. _Please, just- let them make it, if it’s the one fucking thing I do in my life, let them live-_

You know how it goes.

Everyone by now knows how it goes. Eddie Kaspbrak choking on his own blood if the blood loss doesn’t get to him first, Richie Tozier screaming as if the sound of it will drag Eddie back. It never does as the others drag him out, as Eddie’s left alone in the dark, an emptied husk of meat and bone without anything driving it.

But a shadow ripples over the cavern, blue-green as if cast from underwater, and something in the world shifts ever so quietly. Eddie Kaspbrak sits up on the ruins of the cavern floor with the sickening twig-snap of tendons and grinding of bones against each other, and slowly, falteringly, finds his way to the tunnels that spread like a web beneath Derry.

All that’s left of him is drops of blood, showing where he goes as he’s tugged along like a puppet on a string.

*

The bottom of the quarry is sea glass green, the same colors Eddie’s seen in shitty hipster boutique windows and decorating magazines that cycled out of the house with every decorating season. It’s the same color he tried to push for with the wedding, some part of him aching with familiarity, and got overruled for a more tasteful backdrop of cream and gold by his mother and Myra.

He aches looking at it now, if only from the literal hole in his chest rather than the metaphorical one.

He can see them down there, his family. His fucked up, small family that might’ve been cracked for so long only to go back to shit so fast once they got underneath Neibolt. God, he loves them still, even now in this strange in-between that shouldn’t be.

Eddie has no fucking clue what will happen if he tries to join them down there, taking a leap of faith. If he’ll be tugged to the depths of the cavern again, be stuck in place at the edge, shatter at the bottom like glass-

He doesn’t know, and he doesn’t care as he sees them cluster together around someone he can’t make out. He doesn’t fucking care, because he wants to be with them so much that it hurts.

Eddie takes a deep breath he doesn’t need, something sickeningly wet about the sound as his lungs scrape against his ribs, and shuffles back from the edge. For a brief moment when he stops, he’d swear that he feels the warmth of sunlight on his skin. Then, he breaks out into a run. The drop is sharp, it’s always been sharp even when they were kids, and barreling towards it like this should be overwhelming but-

The second his sneakers leave the ground it feels like flying. Something bright and pure bubbles up in his chest, a laugh stuck in his throat as gravity kicks in-

(The last time they’d done this it’d been just the four of them. _StanMikeEddieRichie,_ gangly teenagers with one last hurrah before summer came and they’d finally be split apart, and they screamed as they went over-)

Hitting the water doesn’t shatter him, hollow him out. He can feel the water rushing into his chest, purifying and clean, and if he was younger with ghosts still digging into him, he might have called it benediction. After everything he’s been through, years of lapsed belief, he’ll call it a gift instead.

Something happens then, at the bottom of the quarry. Something happens as he claws his way to the surface, the water washing away all the grime and blood and fuck-knows-what from him, making him anew. Skin stitching together burns just the same as it being ripped through, leaves his vision flickering and fading again as his lungs start to hurt. He keeps swimming anyways, up, up to the light-

Eddie sucks in air greedily when he bursts from the depths, pushing his hair back out of his face on autopilot. He has to see them, needs to-

It’s the clearest he’s ever felt as he coughs hard enough for his eyes to water, as he croaks “Jesus, who fucking died?” when he sees a sea of long faces.

Them screaming shouldn’t be as much of a surprise as it is. It shouldn’t be enough to make him stumble back, rolling his ankle and falling back into the water. One of them lashes out before he can go fully under, fingers tangling in the front of his hoodie, and he’s dragged in quickly enough his breath hitches in his chest, catches in that familiar stutter-scratch that usually ended in wheezing-

They’re screaming his name as he clings to someone’s shirt desperately, seeking warmth on autopilot as he shakes, and all he can think as he leans into whoever’s side is _I love them. Fuck me, I love these chucklefucks so much I want to scream with it, I would die all over again if this happened just the same._ His vision is blurry with tears and fuck knows how much nasty scum-infested water as he stumbles over saying “I- it’s me, it’s _me,_ the first- the first one of you to call me a sloppy bitch, I’m not gonna tell the doctor _shit_ about how we got some- some fucked up strain of leptospirosis, we’re gonna be Patient Zero on some zombie shit at this rate with all the fucked-up shit that was in the sewers-”

Whoever he’s leaning into is crying, harsh shaking sobs, the longer he verbally spins out. Maybe being mobbed by his friends after, well, after everything happened should be smothering, freak him out as they crowd even tighter around the two of them, sounding close to tears themselves. But he doesn’t care as his words stutter to a stop, as he buries his face into someone’s shoulder and thinks _Thank fuck_ as he twists his fingers into their shirt.

Thank fuck he has them back, that he gets to have this, even if he had to die for it first.

**Author's Note:**

> And in Atlanta, Georgia, a man wakes up to birdsong.
> 
> \---
> 
> Eddie's relationship with the other Losers kicks me in the teeth, and I just. I really wanted to play with that, and that shred of _what if_ that comes with, y'know. Eddie's death actually being about him. The Losers are found family, that's just how it is. Also Movie Eddie has zombie/ghost energy, thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
> 
> ~~If you want to interpret this as Eddie/Richie pre-slash I'm not stopping you, but it didn't feel right to tag it that way with no resolution in that direction asdfgh~~


End file.
